MONTFORT: The Founder of Parliament

Review – From the latest review by The Historical Novel Society:

Reading the ample “historical context” notes that follow each volume of Katherine Ashe’s utterly remarkable tetralogy of novels based on the life of 13th-century warrior-statesman Simon de Montfort, one thing becomes obvious: [Ashe] could easily have produced the most authoritative English-language biography of her subject ever written.”

The Montfort Series

MONTFORT combines ground-breaking research with novelistic skills that bring the 13th century brilliantly to life in all it’s scope — from jousts and battle scenes to the pageantry of royal progresses and glorious feasts, from medieval international banking to Crusade, troubadours and the Court of Love.

This four volume series follows the known events and each volume has a Historical Context section with citations from 13th century documents. The true life story of Simon de Montfort is dramatic, extreme, and the events are often contradictory. Montfort provides a vivid telling of the story that is plausible and thoroughly lifelike, a thrilling read for entertainment, and an intriguing speculation for the most devoted historian.

More Reviews for MONTFORT

MONTFORT THE FOUNDER OF PARLIAMENT
Volume I: The Early Years: 1229 to 1243

Ashe presents a jousting first installment of a four-volume fiction on the deeply contentious founder of parliament, Simon de Montfort… If the novel is thoroughly researched as Ashe’s is—from descriptions of medieval latrines and houseboys called “Garbage” to the decadence of Europe’s emperors—it is all the more thoroughly imagined.

A full-blooded second installment of Ashe’s historical fiction, in which the seeds of rebellion against Henry III’s economic tyranny are sown in the mind of Simon de Montfort, the founder of Parliament. Ashe charges ahead…taking the reader along on a largely gripping ride.

A Lasting Legacy

Simon de Montfort, the founder of England’s Parliament, was the foremost knight and military strategist of his time. Friend of Saint Louis, thorn in the side of the Plantagenets, he was chosen viceroy by Prince Richard’s crusaders and the Christian lords of Palestine. He served as Regent of France, but rejected the Crown of England, championing instead the New Millennium of democracy preached by Dominican and Franciscan friars.

Believed by his followers to be the Angel of the Apocalypse, or even the Risen Christ, a cult grew about Simon de Montfort that centered upon miracles witnessed at the site of his death at the Battle of Evesham. To suppress his faithful and revolutionary partisans, it was made a hanging crime to speak his name. But medieval tales of Robin Hood suggest it was he, not Richard Lionheart, who was the “king” the common folk prayed would return to rescue them from oppressive sheriffs.

For his chivalry, honor and astounding deeds of combat, he was proudly cited by Henry VIII as an ancestor of the Tudors. Indeed, through his daughter Eleanor’s marriage to Llewellyn, Prince of northern Wales, Simon de Montfort is ancestor to the united royal lineages of northern and southern Wales from whom the Tudors claimed descent.